Related papers: Probing embryonic tissue mechanics with laser hole…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
The effect of AC electric fields on the elasticity of supported lipid bilayers has been investigated at the microscopic level using grazing incidence synchrotron x-ray scattering. A strong decrease in the membrane tension up to 1mN/m and a…
The mechanics of animal cells is strongly determined by stress fibers, which are contractile filament bundles that form dynamically in response to extracellular cues. Stress fibers allow the cell to adapt its mechanics to environmental…
Organogenesis has been studied for decades, but fundamental questions regarding the control of growth and shape remain unsolved. We have recently shown that of all proposed mathematical models only ligand-receptor based Turing models…
Nano-indentation based on, e.g., atomic force microscopy (AFM), can measure single cell elasticity with high spatial resolution and sensitivity, but relating the data to cell mechanical properties depends on modeling that requires knowledge…
We investigate numerically how the motion of an intruder within a two-dimensional granular system affects its structure and produces drag on the intruder. We made use of discrete numerical simulations in which a larger disk (intruder) is…
Contractile forces exerted on the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM) lead to the alignment and stretching of constituent fibers within the vicinity of cells. As a consequence, the matrix reorganizes to form thick bundles of aligned…
We investigate the elasticity of unsupported epithelial monolayer and we discover that unlike a thin solid plate, which wrinkles if geometrically incompatible with the underlying substrate, the epithelium may do so even in absence of the…
Local stresses in a tissue, a collective property, regulate cell division and apoptosis. In turn, cell growth and division induce active stresses in the tissue. As a consequence, there is a feedback between cell growth and local stresses.…
Tiny flying insects of body lengths under 2 mm use the `clap-and-fling' mechanism with bristled wings for lift augmentation and drag reduction at chord-based Reynolds number ($Re$) on $\mathcal{O}$(10). We examine wing-wing interaction of…
We use a custom shear cell coupled to an optical microscope to investigate at the particle level the yielding transition in concentrated emulsions subjected to an oscillatory shear deformation. By performing experiments lasting thousands of…
Molecular adsorbates on metal surfaces exchange energy with substrate phonons and low-lying electron-hole pair excitations. In the limit of weak coupling, electron-hole pair excitations can be seen as exerting frictional forces on…
Many of the cell membrane vital functions are achieved by the self-organization of the proteins and biopolymers embedded in it. The protein dynamics are in part determined by its drag. A large number of these proteins can polymerize to form…
Plant morphology emerges from cellular growth and structure. The turgor-driven diffuse growth of a cell can be highly anisotropic: significant longitudinally and negligible radially. Such anisotropy is ensured by cellulose microfibrils…
Macroscopic properties and shapes of biological tissues depend on the remodelling of cell-cell junctions at the microscopic scale. We propose a theoretical framework that couples a vertex model of solid confluent tissues with the dynamics…
With the purpose of investigating a linear elastic solid containing a dilute distribution of cylindrical and prismatic holes parallel to the torsion axis, the full-field solution for an infinite elastic plane containing a single void and…
Centering and decentering of cellular components is essential for internal organization of cells and their ability to perform basic cellular functions such as division and motility. How cells achieve proper localization of their components…
We develop a model the dynamics of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and chondrocytes evolving in a nonwoven polyethylene terephtalate (PET) scaffold impregnated with hyaluron and supplied with a differentiation medium. The scaffold and…
The poorly-ionized interior of the protoplanetary disk is the location where dust coagulation processes may be most efficient. However even here, planetesimal formation may be limited by the loss of solid material through radial drift, and…
It is well known that an annular sheet could wrinkle as a result of axisymmetric tensile loads applied at the edges. In this system, regions under compression appear due to Poisson effect in the azimuthal direction yielding an incompatible…